Lucky winner interrupts dinner for Lottery celebration
A Montgomery Village resident was enjoying a dinner of Chinese takeout when he had to stop for a celebration of his Lottery luck. His Mega Millions ticket with the Megaplier option won him a $15,000 prize in the June 3 drawing.
The lucky winner purchased four tickets for Mega Millions on June 3, but didn’t check them until a few days later, as he was in the process of making another Lottery purchase. He didn’t win anything on his first three tickets, but when he scanned the fourth one, the ticket checker displayed a message he’d never seen before.
“It said ‘Cash at Lottery,’ and I’d never seen that before,” he said. “I didn’t know what it meant. So I waited for the machine to reset and I tried it a second time and it said it again. So I asked the guy to print me the winning numbers report from the last drawing.”
He took his tickets, the printout of the winning numbers and his Chinese food home, and as he was eating, the meaning of that “Cash at Lottery” message finally began to set in.
“Oh, man, I was stunned,” said the Montgomery County resident, who works in law enforcement. “I didn’t sleep that night. I called my parents and I said, ‘You’re not gonna believe this, but I won $15,000.’ The most I’d ever won before was $100.”
His winning ticket matched four of the five white balls that were drawn on June 3 and also matched the Mega Ball, delivering a base prize of $5,000. He also paid the extra $1 to add the Megaplier option to his ticket, meaning that the 3x multiplier randomly drawn that night tripled his prize to $15,000. The lucky winner said he planned to use the money to pay bills.
He purchased his winning ticket at the 7-Eleven store located at 3 Professional Drive in Gaithersburg. Mega Millions drawings are held every Tuesday and Friday with a jackpot that starts at $15 million and rises after each drawing in which there is no jackpot winner. Tickets are $1 for each line of numbers, or $2 for players to add the Megaplier option. In addition to the jackpot, there are eight other prize levels ranging from $1 to $1 million.